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What do you say to someone who’s mourning during the holidays? If your friends’ loss is recent, wishing them “happy holidays” — or happy anything from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day — might come across as if you don’t realize (or care about) the permanence of their grief. On the other hand, saying nothing at all speaks a louder message of indifference than shouted words.

Like the scent of candles, grief remains in the air of the holidays even amid the beauty and joys of the season (photo by Teresa TL Bruce, TealAshes.com).

Saying something is better than saying nothing. Here are ways to tell your friends you’re thinking of them and aware of their grief during the holidays:

“I’m thinking of you. I know this is your first Thanksgiving without [say the name of the person who died].”

“I’m keeping you and your family in my thoughts this second Hanukkah after [say the name]’s death. I realize you’re still adjusting to [his/her] absence.”

“Will you join us for Christmas Eve services? We realize you might not want to sit alone.”

“I’ve brought you this token as a symbol of [one of the seven principles] to share with you this first week of Kwanzaa without [say the name].”

“I know this New Year’s Eve will be hard without [say the name of the deceased] here with you.”

“Will you please join me for this holiday?”

“May I come visit with you during this holiday?”

“I’d love to hear stories about [say the name of the lost loved one].”

Did it seem odd that I repeated the admonition to say the name of the deceased? Most mourners need to process their losses by talking of their departed loved ones. Too often, well-meaning friends think they’ll “make” their friends sad if they mention the names of the ones being mourned. The reality is they’re already sad and would rather have others acknowledge their loss instead of pretending it didn’t happen. Remember, grief is a natural outgrowth of love.

Well-thought words can soothe wounded hearts. (Notice I said “soothe” and not “heal”? You can’t “fix” anyone’s grief, but you can offer consoling support that doesn’t deepen pain.) When talking about the holidays with the newly bereaved, be thoughtful and deliberate in your choices of words:

Plan to commemorateinstead of celebrate.

Invite grieving friends to a gatheringrather than a party.

Acknowledge awareness of your friends’ ongoinggrief rather than assuming they should already feel or do anything expected by others.

Avoid “at least” statements, which diminish the importance and impact of mourners’ losses.

There’s no good time of year to grieve, but the holidays can be especially difficult. Whether death takes place in the middle of the busiest holidays or in the least-scheduled month of a family (or corporate) calendar, it’s going to hurt. And it’s going to hurt not just now, when the loss is new, but also in the weeks and months and years to come. (Yes, I said years.)

Holiday traditions and expectations sometimes fan the embers of grief back into flames. You can’t restore what grief’s flames damage, but you can offer the balm of kindness and understanding as your mourning friends’ adapt to their altered lives.

If you find this helpful, please share to help others learn what to say (and what not to say).

Want to rub salt and vinegar in the weary wounds of the newly bereaved? Decorate your home like a scary cemetery with limbs and bones reaching from the ground. Dress yourself (and even worse, your child!) like a zombie — a decaying, walking “undead” — for fun. And what prompted this rant-like post, you might wonder? Could it be the last-straw home house I drove past that featured fake, bloody-looking, severed heads hanging from a tree?

If these folks want to be cruel to friends, neighbors, and strangers after their loved ones died, congratulations — mission accomplished. Halloween “decorations” like these horrify many mourners.

Who cares whether little kids will be outside and see these scary things? Who cares whether children (or their parents) have recently buried family members, some due to violence? If they don’t like it, they don’t have to look, right?

Wrong.

If you enjoy a decor that makes the Addams Family home seem like the Little House on the Prairie, then good for you! But please confine the creepiness to the interior of your castle — you don’t need to inflict it on everyone who inadvertently stumbles across your street on their way to school or to work. And if you’ve invited a recently bereaved friend to your party I do applaud you for involving them — that’s great! (But offer them a heads-up on the decor so they won’t freak out when they step inside.)

Some people’s life-inspired nightmares already hold enough fuel to burn for a lifetime without you fanning those flames.

I’ve said this before:

My husband died about a month before Halloween. Fake tombstones and skeletons lined store aisles. I was a new widow, the unwilling owner of his cemetery plot. Holiday prop inscriptions labeled Rest in Peace were anything but peaceful. … Mock cemetery displays (complete with fake tombstones and skeletons) contradict the “peaceful” invocation to “rest in peace” (RIP). Many mourners despise them. … There’s nothing restful or peaceful about mock burial sites when you’ve had to buy a real one. — from Halloween Grief

(photo by Teresa TL Bruce, TealAshes.com)

If you want to decorate the outside of your house for a spooky but not sickening Halloween, stick with adorable witches, goblins, or even ghosts. Embrace historic, cultural, artistic Day of the Dead traditions honoring deceased ancestors. Let your porch pop with pumpkins, bats, and spiders.

But keep the gross stuff to yourself. Please. Yes, the U.S.A. is a free country with freedom of speech. But just because we can say (or display) a thing doesn’t mean we should.

A little bit of thinking how others might feel can go a long way toward helping grieving friends. At Halloween, please be considerate when dressing up yourself, your home, and your car.

(Rant over. For now.)

Maybe this van’s owner had valid reasons for the skeletons and red paint on (and in) this vehicle more than a month before Halloween — but I can’t imagine any. (photo by Teresa TL Bruce, TealAshes.com)

When you learn a friend or co-worker is newly widowed, what do you say? What can you do?

Think first.

When you learn a friend or co-worker is widowed, reach out — and listen. (photo by Teresa TL Bruce, TealAshes.com)

Are you rushing to say the first (clichéd) thing that pops into your mind?

Most trite sayings sting rather than soothe, but sincerity reaches hearts.

Avoid phrases like “in a better place” and “better off” in your attempts at consolation.

How will your words sound to the person grieving their life partner?

Are you offering validation of their pain and showing you recognize the unique nature of their loss? Great. Proceed.

Or are you rushing to minimize the loss in the misplaced hope of making the mourner feel better? Think again.

Avoid saying “at least” about anything related to the death or what preceded it.

Are you adding to or draining from the strength of the bereaved?

Avoid asking, “How are you?” — because when acutely grieving, they’re not doing well enough to know how to answer — unless you’re tying the question to a solution for your friend (“How are you getting your family from the airport? May I pick them up for you?”).

Avoid asking, “What do you need?” or “What can I do for you?” Most mourners are too overwhelmed by grief to know.

Neither blame nor shame the bereaved or the deceased.

This isn’t the time to lecture suicide survivors about mental health issues.

This is not the time to say the person who died should have known better than to smoke or to drink and drive or to cross the street or to neglect regular checkups or to eat as they did …

This is not the time to blame the now dead firefighter, policeman, or military service person for choosing that profession.

Remember, this isn’t about you. It’s about reaching out in support of your friend, co-worker, or relative who’s mourning.

It’s helpful to remember your own losses and how they made you feel, but never compare your loss to the bereaved unless you’re doing so in a way that validates theirs.

I found it comforting when older widows said things like “I can’t imagine what it would be like to still be raising children as a widow. It was hard enough with mine already grown. Bless you.”

And it felt validating when younger widows said things like “I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be widowed after 24 years. It was hard enough for me after our 12 years together. I’m so sorry.”

Speak up next.

“I’m sorry.”

“I can’t imagine what you’re going through, but I’m here for you.” (Follow this up by being there.)

“I want to help, but I don’t know how, so may I come sit with you in the meantime?”

“May I do this [specific task] for you?”

“I will miss him [or her] too, though I know you’re hurting much more.”

“I wish you had more time with [speak the name of the deceased].”

“I’d love to hear more about [speak the name of the deceased] when you feel like talking.”

“I’m sorry.” (Yes, I repeated this, and it’s okay for you to repeat it too.)

And act.

Do (or send) practical help: pull weeds, shovel snow, bring food, pick up dry cleaning, tend children, make phone calls, wash dishes or laundry (BUT do NOT touch items belonging to or last used by the deceased without first getting explicit permission from the mourning, widowed partner) …

Follow up. If you promised to check in next week, do it. If you offered to have lunch together, set it up and don’t back out. If you mentioned a book you found helpful when you were grieving a similar loss, and if your mourning, widowed friend seemed interested, bring a copy to him or her.

Set reminders. Offer support throughout the weeks and months following the death. Note significant dates in your calendar (anniversaries, birthdays, holidays, diagnosis dates, etc.), and let your friends know you’re thinking of them as those dates approach.

Don’t take it personally if grieving friends don’t return messages or phone calls. Sometimes grief is too overwhelming for such seemingly simple tasks.

Repeat.

When friends are grieving, they get to decide what is helpful or what is offensive. Again, it’s not about you. If they say you’ve done something hurtful, own it. Apologize rather than defending yourself, and do better in the future. (And be proud of yourself for reaching out despite the discomfort of acknowledging death and loss. Thanks for reaching out to your friends.)

If you find this helpful, please share to help others learn what to say (and what not to say).

Almost a year ago, I posted about getting ready for Hurricane Matthew in Grief Before and After the Storm. Now Hurricane Irma’s bullying her way toward swallowing my state.

Batteries were in short supply before Hurricane Irma (photo by Teresa TL Bruce, TealAshes.com).

With Irma following so closely on the horrible heels of Harvey, people in Central Florida took this storm’s approach seriously. Usually, by the time most folks start preparing — a day or two before a hurricane — supplies become scarce. I went to the store Wednesday to freshen my supplies (read: to buy chocolate-covered cookies and Cheetos) and stopped by a few aisles just to see how they looked in advance of Sunday afternoon’s anticipated rough weather. As you can see by my photos, options were already limited.

It’s awful to admit I smiled when I saw the emptied shelves — not that I felt happy the supplies were gone. Far from it. Many people still needed essential items, and I hadn’t a clue whether they’d be able to find them elsewhere. A part of me even felt guilty that I’d tucked them away months ago when hurricane season began. (I used to teach emergency preparation seminars at public and private events around our area; I generally keep necessary emergency kit items current.)

Anyone who waited until four days before Irma’s arrival to purchase flashlights at this store might be spending many hours in the dark (photo by Teresa TL Bruce, TealAshes.com).

I sighed with relief that so many of my fellow residents weren’t waiting until the last minute this time.

Once-upon-a-lifetime ago — my husband’s lifetime, to be precise — I was active in my neighborhood CERT program*. I even got licensed to operate ham radio so I could check in with others in the event of phone failures.

But the first time I tried to reconnect with my CERT peers after my husband died, the triage refresher course cut too deeply. I shook as the instructor stressed the potential for “life over limb” decisions that offered “the greatest good for the greatest number.”

I couldn’t handle the reminder that sometimes you can’t save people no matter how hard you try. That I couldn’t save my husband no matter how hard I’d tried. That despite my training and efforts, he died.

It took years to forgive myself for failing him. My inability to save him left me as empty as the bottled water aisle before Irma.

Parents mourn their lost babes of every age. Whether children died in utero or during infancy, whether they perished as toddlers or tweens or teens, or whether death took them by surprise accident in young adulthood or inch-at-a-time illness in middle age, they died out of order. As humans, we’re wired to expect that children won’t die before parents, so when it happens, it’s unthinkably cruel, indescribably painful.

If you’ve wondered how to console friends who’ve lost a son or daughter, bless you. Too often, bereaved parents lament over deepened, inflicted pain from ill-thought comments. Or, when grieving parents most need support, they feel the added ache of uncomfortable, abandoned absence from those who avoid them.

I’ve not suffered the death of a child, although I’ve witnessed friends in such agony. I’ve listened to them and sat with them in their losses. But seeing and hearing and sitting isn’t knowing. Empathy extends only so far.*

Losing your loved one may have introduced you to the pain of grief — and it’s good for you to remember that pain to help you attempt to empathize — but your loss didn’t teach you the intimate rending of self that happened to your grieving friends when their child died.

Few bereaved parents tell other grieving parents they know how the others feel — even if their losses seem similar. (Some might remember how they felt when they lost their own child while acknowledging the deep, unique, rawness of the newly mourning parents’ pain.)

Stop saying “at least” in any context. There’s nothing “least” about the loss of a child.

“At least” minimizes the significance of the loss, which grieving friends need validated and acknowledged, not diminished.

This includes not saying “at least your child lived x long …” or “at least your child won’t have to …” or “at least you have faith in the hereafter …” or “at least” anything.

Allow grieving parents the right to express (or not express) their faith in their own terms. Friends who believe in hereafter reunions with their beloved children nevertheless agonize over their here-and-now separation until then. (Those who preach or sermonize at them often counteract the comfort they intend to convey.)

Never suggest how “lucky” the parents are they won’t have to endure the hard parts of parenting their deceased child. They would gladly endure sleepless nights, endless diapering, terrible twos tantrums, teen angst, college costs, and every other parenting so-called hardship with their beloved child.

Never speak of replacing the deceased son or daughter. Loved ones aren’t replaceable.

Avoid telling mourning parents they “should” anything.

Not how they should …

Not what they should …

Not when they should …

Not why they should …

Their loss requires their timing and readiness and processing and coping and surviving.

Only they will know when they are capable of accomplishing more than breathing — which will be hard enough for months.

Avoid asking “How are you?”

It’s impossible to answer. Grief hurts too much. It’s in every cell. It overwhelms and overrides.

“Hello” works as a greeting. “How’re you doing?” does not.

If you catch yourself uttering the habitual “How are — ” turn it into “How glad I am to see you.”

You can offer increased support to your grieving friends by saying:

“I’m so sorry.”

“I’m here.”

“Would you like to tell me about [speak the name of the deceased child]?”

“When you feel up to it, I’d love to share some of my favorite memories (or photos) of [name the child who died] with you.”

“It’s okay to fall apart. You don’t have to be strong.”

Telling bereaved parents they have to be strong (for each other, for other children, etc.) only reinforces how weakened and fractured they feel. Let them know you and others are there to pick up the pieces they can’t lift.

However, pleaseDO NOT TOUCH anything belonging to the deceased child without explicit permission to do so. Parents (and siblings) might need to see the bed left a mess or smell their child’s scent on a dirty shirt or keep a tower of blocks in chaotic disarray where they last fell.

You can also offer comfort to grieving families through these actions:

Follow through on the activities you offered to do in the list above.

Listen to your bereaved friends — parents, grandparents, siblings, and other kin to the child who died. All are hurting. All need the safety of being able to vent without being judged or disciplined for expressing their emotions.

Mark the child’s birth and death dates in your calendar, and then …

A month before, a week before, and the day of, let your friends know you’re aware of their child’s upcoming birthday.

During the first year (and beyond), be aware that most bereaved parents dread the death date’s day of the month every month as it ticks off another milestone of their child’s absence.

Let your friends know you are thinking of, praying for, and hurting for them — and remembering their absent child — around these dates, especially near the sixth-month and annual death dates. The death anniversary will be difficult. Reach out.

Feelings will also be tender near the start and end of the school year when your friends will continue to be aware of what grade level their child would have entered or graduated from. Reach out in acknowledging support.

Repeat every year — unless your friends ask you not to bring it up anymore. Respect their wishes while continuing to reach out in nonspecific, loving support.

Listen again.

Listen later.

Listen longer.

Listen in silence.

Listen over the phone.

Listen in person.

Cut mourning parents some slack if they ignore phone calls, bail on social engagements, or don’t seem like themselves. They aren’t themselves anymore. Part of their self-identity (as Son‘s Mom or Daughter‘s Dad) was shattered.

They are still parents to their deceased child — and always will be — but will never again have the opportunity to physically parent that beloved child. That’s not something anyone “gets over.” Ever.

In time — much, much time — and with understanding support, your friends will eventually learn how to live onward again despite their grief.**

If you have children the same age as your friends’ deceased child, be aware that bereaved parents might seek more interaction with you and your family — or less. Continue reaching out either way.

And listen.

___

*Please forgive me, my dear friends who’ve mourned children, if I’ve tread on tender feelings or gotten this wrong. You’ve taught me more about endurance and living with loss than I’ve learned on my own, and my intention is to honor the grief you’ve borne for the children you’ve lost and continue to love.